Evonik and duisport establish development company DERS

Essen/Duisburg - Evonik Industries AG and Duisburger Hafen AG (duisport) have established the jointly controlled company „DERS Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH“ (Duisport-Evonik-Rhein-Sieg-development company, DERS) for the development of Evonik's Lülsdorf location. Thomas Wessel, Chief Human Resources Officer of Evonik Industries AG, and Erich Staake, Chief Executive Officer of Duisburger Hafen AG, signed a joint venture agreement today. "We look forward to expanding our positive and successful collaboration with duisport. DERS provides incentives for additional companies to set up operations at Evonik’s Lülsdorf site, which creates workplaces and contributes to the development of North Rhine Westphalia as an industry location," says Wessel.

"The special competitive advantage of the North Rhine-Westphalia region lies in the close linkages between industry and logistics. DERS represents an outstanding project of our strategic collaboration with Evonik, which was established last year. With the joint development of the Lülsdorf site, we are bundling our know-how, which enables us to realize considerable value-added potentials in the region," emphasizes Staake. DERS, in which both partners have an equal stake, will commence operations on 1 January 2016. Its Managing Directors will be Hans Josef Fingerhuth, Logistics Manager of Evonik's locations in Wesseling and Lülsdorf, along with Volker Schmitz, Managing Director of duisport agency GmbH. The objective of the joint venture is to develop the 50 hectares of open space that is currently available at the Lülsdorf location, and to market these premises with the aim of attracting production and logistics companies. In addition, the existing on- site logistics activities will also be further optimized. In this vein, Evonik and duisport will continue their long-standing and successful partnership. At the Marl chemical park, they are joint shareholders of Umschlag Terminal Marl GmbH & Co. KG. This company operates the terminal for combined transportation at that location. DERS will continue the strategic collaboration between the two partners that was established last year. The objective of this strategic partnership is the development and implementation of modern logistics concepts and long-term site development. duisport has considerable logistics know-how in land development as well as port and rail handling. This expertise and Evonik's existing logistics competencies at the Lülsdorf site will now be combined within DERS. Due to its location on the right side of the Rhine between Cologne and Bonn, the site offers optimum conditions for companies that specialize in both general and chemical-specific logistics, and also offers important infrastructure facilities such as a shipping pier, pipelines and a connection to the track network. DERS and newly added industry companies will also be able to utilize the existing commercial logistics, such as the existing commercial port, commercial rail operations, incoming and outgoing goods processing and a hazardous material warehouse. Center piece of the marketing efforts is the establishment of a trimodal container terminal as an additional unit. It would offer flexibility in loading containers on trucks, rail or ship and vice versa.